This is a personal journal documenting my studies in art - mainly just a place to keep notes and to organize my thoughts better than I could in a handwritten journal (you can't do a search in a paper journal, or post live links). My ultimate goal is oil painting, but I want to start with developing my grasp of the basics in drawing.

Wednesday, April 2, 2014

Notes on line quality

Jason created a video about line quality and its various uses. He wasn't planning to do this, it was in response to discussions among level up members - I think that's awesome teaching technique. Notes follow:

Lines pulsate - get lost and found due to atmospheric perspective, overlapping, emphasis etc.

Line can push and pull form - fade to pull it forward into light front plane, or push it back into darker back plane by thickening and darkening.

^ Can also do the opposite, pulling forward with dark/thick, depending on what strategy you're using on that part of the drawing.

This all works with light lines too, not just dark lines.

Crisper line closer to viewer, making form pop, line fades as it moves into background planes.

Darker, heavier, crisper line describes something still and clearly seen.

Can show stress, the active muscles and tendons are more stressed so they pop more.

Michelangelo trick - accented rhytmic diagonals. A diagonal that's carried across from one side of the form to the other, where it disappears behind the form it darkens briefly, and also where it re-emerges on the other side, from around behind the body.

Used to create focus (emphasis).

Even with multiple drawings on a page, there can be primarly, secondary, tertiary areas of interest (focus, emophasis). Done with line as well as tone, degree of information etc.

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About Me

Dark Matter - we can't see it, we can't detect it, and yet it needs to be there in order for the universe to behave the way it does. Of course it's only one of many unproven theories, but here's what it means to me -- Sometimes the most important things are those we can't understand or quantify; that which remains mysterious in this modern world dominated by rational materialism.